TEENS AREN'T SEEING FULL PICTURE ON DRUGS

The Issue: A federally funded survey shows that although use of illicit
drugs among teenagers has declined, misuse of prescription drugs has
increased.

Our Opinion: The full message apparently still is not getting through: The
improper use of any drug can be dangerous, even lethal.

The 33rd annual survey by the University of Michigan Institute for Social
Research on teenage drug use has been completed, and there is good news
and bad news.

The good news is that the use of illicit drugs in down. The bad news is
that the misuse of prescription drugs has increased. That has cuased many
experts to be concerned.

"Prescription drugs remain at high and very concerning levels," Wilson
Compton, division director at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, told
The Chicago Tribune. "We need to do a better job of communicating the
risks of these prescription drugs and protecting youth from what can be
dangerous in the long run."

The survey, called "Monitoring the Future," was funded by the institute
and involved more than 48,000 eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders.

One of the most potent painkillers being misused by teenagers is
OxyContin. In this year's survey one out of 20 teens admitted misusing it,
an increase of 30 percent from 2002, when the institute began
monitoring use of the drug.

The use of Vicodin, another painkiller, has remained constant since the
institute began monitoring it in 2002. It's misused by about 10 percent of
the teenagers surveyed.

The survey didn't try to explain the increase in abuse of prescription
drugs by teenagers, but at least one expert believes it's because the
drugs are easily accessible.

John P. Walters, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy,
said that based on other surveys the source of prescription drugs for 71
percent of youngsters is their parents' medicine cabinets.

Walters also said that many teenagers seem to be unaware of the danger of
prescription drugs.

Although they understand that illicit drugs such as heroin and cocaine can
be dangerous, teens seem to assume that drugs made by pharmaceutical
companies are safe.

"These are certainly dangerous, mostly synthetic opiates that are the most
widely abused," Walters told the Los Angeles Times. "They are not only a
source of addiction, but they ... can be a source of seizure, even death,
when taken in quantities."

Even though the use of illicit drugs is down, especially among
eighth-graders, one drug appears to be staging a comeback. The use of
Ecstasy, a mind-altering drug, had dropped dramatically early in this
decade when concern about it sparked a considerable amount of negative
publicity. But in the past three years concerns about the risks of Ecstasy
apparently have waned, and its use among all three grade levels surveyed
has increased.

Lloyd Johnston, a University of Michigan researcher who worked on the
survey, told the Chicago Tribune, "Young people are coming to see its use
as less dangerous than did their predecessors as recently as 2004, and
that is a warning signal that the increase in use may continue."

Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance,
cautioned against viewing the decline in the use of illicit drugs as a
victory in the war on drugs.

He said the decrease is mainly due to fewer teenagers using marijuana, one
of the least dangerous of the illegal drugs.

Although the good news in the report is encouraging, it's evident that
there is still much work to be done.

The message for teenagers, and adults, too, is that drugs, whether illicit
or prescription, can be dangerous, even lethal.